'Untitled See Saw Painting', Narbi Price

2009,
Acrylic on canvas,
80 x 120 cm

Artist's statement

On the way to the library to write this, I was sure I was going to see an empty packet of
Space Raiders by the bus stop but all I found was an apple core and a green balloon,
unblown. Laurie Anderson once said that novels are full of things happening but she
wanted to write a novel about the spaces in-between, where nothing was happening.
It takes a certain state of mind to choose a neutral object as your subject, to choose the
mundane over the dramatic, the trivial exterior over the florid treasures of the inner world.
On one level, there's a disavowal of the grandiose and histrionic; on another, a gentle
subversion of the hierarchy of values that underpins our seeing.

In their carefully crafted blandness, Prices paintings signify the presence of a willingness
to let the world speak for itself. The absence of human subjects and deliberate lack of
narrative place the viewer in a uniquely familiar position - alone with the world as it is.
The neutral object steers us between the poles of attraction and aversion, and confronts
us with the ambiguity of the everyday - the places we inhabit while nothing's happening.

(Text by Nev Clay, originally published in part in 'Summer 2009' show catalogue, August 2009.)